Dear Folks –

Jeffery replied to Bruce:

>> Such as ‘Space Viking’.. a novel that’s overtly about raiding less technologically advanced worlds for their valuables :-/

> 

>Or Piper's "A Slave is a Slave", which has just about everything Imperium in it..

That’s pretty timely… I’ve literally just finished reading Space Viking, now I can go off and read another Piper novel – thanks!

BTW, there’s a short story somewhere in his future history centred on the Emperor of a large, stagnant Imperium, which has just had a tech breakthrough. I think it may have been the possible discovery of time travel, but that’s just a MacGuffin – the real issue (around which there is a lot of discussion) is that *something* was need to break out of stagnation, or the Empire would start either splintering off or collapsing in on itself.

Sound like a familiar scenario?  ;-)

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David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw                    davidjw@pcug.org.au
"I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"